by Joy Fielding
“Who was after you?” Sara asked.
“I don’t know.” My mother’s unsteady hands reached over to stroke Sara’s hair. “You’re a pretty thing, aren’t you?” she said. “Are you new here?”
I watched Sara’s features crumple even as her eyes grew wide. “Don’t you recognize me, Grandma?” she asked, her voice as small as a child’s. “It’s me, Sara, your granddaughter.”
“Sara?”
“I’ve changed my hair color,” Sara explained.
“So you have,” my mother said, and smiled. “I think I’d like to lie down now.” Watery eyes swept across the room. “Would you mind? I seem to be very tired.”
“Of course not,” I told her. “You rest for a while. We’ll see you later.”
“It was the hair color,” Sara said as we crossed the parking lot to my car. “That’s why she didn’t recognize me. It’s my hair.”
“Time to get those roots done, kid,” my sister said.
“My mother won’t give me any money.”
I unlocked the car door. We climbed inside, Sara beside me, Jo Lynn in the back. Jo Lynn’s hand instantly flopped over the front seat, waved five twenty-dollar bills beside Sara’s head. “Here. My treat. Christmas comes a day early.”
“Wow. This is so cool.”
“You’re in a good mood,” I said, deciding not to be angry with Jo Lynn’s impromptu generosity.
“Our mother is safe,” she said sarcastically, flopping back in her seat. “All is right with the world.”
“Who do you think was after her?” Sara asked.
“Her conscience,” Jo Lynn said.
“Her conscience?” Sara repeated.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It means I’m hungry,” Jo Lynn said. “It means we stop for lunch. My treat.”
“I don’t have time,” I began.
“Everybody has time to eat,” Jo Lynn pronounced. “What kind of example are you setting for your daughter? You want her to turn into one of those scrawny anorexics?”
I didn’t think there was much chance of that, but I agreed to stop for lunch.
“We’ll go to the mall,” Jo Lynn said as I turned onto 1-95. “That way, we can eat, Sara can get her hair done, and we can do some last-minute Christmas shopping.”
“Not me,” Sara said. “Mom won’t give me any money to buy presents.”
“Mean Mommy,” Jo Lynn said, and laughed. “Don’t worry, kid, I have lots of money. You can buy whatever you want.”
“And where is all this money coming from?” I asked. “Did you get a job?”
Jo Lynn made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort. “You don’t want to know,” she said.
I decided she was probably right, so I said nothing further.
Sara, however, had no such qualms. “Where’d you get the money?” she asked.
Jo Lynn required no further prompting. She lurched forward, leaned her elbows on the back of the front seat, rested her head on her hands. “I promised the Enquirer an exclusive. They paid me half the money in advance.”
“An exclusive what?” Sara asked as I tried to block my ears to the inevitable.
I could feel Jo Lynn’s smile burning a hole in the back of my neck. “An exclusive on my wedding,” she said.
“What is it going to take to convince you that the man you’re so intent on marrying is a homicidal maniac?” I asked Jo Lynn as soon as Sara took off to get her hair done. We were sitting in the crowded food court on the second level of the Gardens Mall, Jo Lynn taking her time with a piece of apple pie, me on my fourth cup of coffee.
“Nothing you could say would ever convince me, so you might as well stop wasting your breath.”
“Don’t you understand that the man would just as soon kill you as look at you?”
“Don’t you understand that I really don’t appreciate these kinds of comments?”
“And I don’t appreciate you undermining my authority.”
“What authority do you have where Colin is concerned?”
“I’m not talking about Colin. I’m talking about Sara.”
“Whoa! Hold on a minute.” Jo Lynn made a sweeping gesture with her hands, elegant magenta nails fluttering before my face. “When did we make the switch?”
“I told Sara I wasn’t giving her any money this Christmas …”
“How can you not give the kid money to buy Christmas presents?” Jo Lynn interrupted.
“That’s not the point.”
“The point is it’s my money,” Jo Lynn said, “and if I want to give money to my niece so she won’t be embarrassed on Christmas morning, then that’s what I’ll do. Don’t be such a grinch. She’ll probably buy you something fabulous.”
“I don’t need anything fabulous.”
“You need something, that’s for sure.”
“Some sane relatives might be nice.”
Jo Lynn swallowed another piece of pie. “So, what do you think is the matter with the old girl anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your educated guess?”
She underlined the word “educated,” making it sound vaguely obscene. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and released it slowly. When I opened them, I noticed several teenage boys looking our way, snickering behind closed fingers.
“You don’t think it could be Alzheimer’s, do you?” Jo Lynn asked.
It was a possibility I’d deliberately refused to consider, and one that, even now, I admitted to my vocabulary with only the greatest of reluctance.
“She has all the symptoms,” Jo Lynn continued. “She’s disoriented; she’s paranoid; she’s forgetful.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean …”
“You said yourself she was losing it when we found the dishwashing detergent in her fridge.”
“Still …”
“She didn’t recognize Sara.”
“It was her hair.”
“It wasn’t her hair.”
“I know,” I said, admitting defeat.
“So, you think it’s Alzheimer’s?”
“I think there’s a good chance.”
“Damn!” Jo Lynn snapped, pushing what was left of her apple pie halfway across the table with an angry flip of her fingers. “Damn it to hell. That makes me so mad.”
I was surprised by the ferocity of Jo Lynn’s reaction. I’d expected her to treat this latest development regarding our mother with her usual degree of casual disinterest.
“There’s no point in getting angry about it,” I told her. “If it’s Alzheimer’s, then, unfortunately, there’s not much we can do. We just have to make sure she’s as comfortable as possible.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
Now I was really confused. “You don’t want her to be comfortable?”
“I want her to get exactly what she deserves.”
“Meaning?”
“Why couldn’t she get cancer like everybody else?”
“Jo Lynn!”
“A little suffering is good for the soul. Isn’t that what they say?”
“You want her to suffer?”
“Why shouldn’t she? What makes her so damn special that she should get off scot-free?”
“She’s your mother.”
“So, what does that mean? That I’m just supposed to forgive and forget? That the past gets wiped clean? She won’t remember it, so I might as well pretend it never happened? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“What is it you want her to remember? I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t.” Jo Lynn shook her head, dislodging several angry tears. “You never have.”
“I’d like to try,” I said honestly.
Jo Lynn jumped to her feet. “What’s the point? You said it yourself. We can’t change anything.”
“That’s not true. Some things can be changed.”
“The past?”
“No, not the past.”
&
nbsp; Jo Lynn nodded her head vigorously up and down, her mouth a bitter pout. “So she just gets away with it.”
“Gets away with what? What are you talking about?”
“Excuse me, miss,” a voice said from somewhere beside us, and we turned to see a brown-haired boy of about fifteen, wearing cutoff jeans at least four sizes too large and a baseball cap worn back to front and pulled low across his forehead. “Are you Jo Lynn Baker?”
“Yes.” Jo Lynn swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, forced a smile onto her lips.
The teenager looked back at his buddies. “It’s her,” he yelled excitedly. “I told you.” He grabbed a napkin off our table and thrust it toward her. “Could you autograph this for me? I don’t have a pen.”
Jo Lynn fished inside her purse for a pen, then quickly scribbled her signature on the crumpled serviette. “Have a good Christmas,” she called after him, her smile now wide and genuine. “Wasn’t that sweet?”
“Gets away with what?” I pressed.
But Jo Lynn was already weaving her way between the tables of the extended food court toward the escalator. “Forget it,” she called back. “Everybody else has.”
It was almost midnight by the time I got to bed, and it took several hours for me to fall asleep, the events of the day ringing in my brain, like a malfunctioning alarm. I’d finally lapsed into merciful unconsciousness when I felt something sweep across my face, soft and gentle, like a chiffon scarf. My hand extended lazily to brush it aside, my eyes still firmly closed. Seconds later, it happened again, only this time it was more a tapping against my skin, like water dripping from a leaky faucet. My fingers brushed the air in front of my face, finding nothing. I turned over, refusing to wake up. Something tickled the back of my neck. I swatted it, felt the sting of my fingers as they connected with my skin, jolting me awake. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, sat up in bed, stared impatiently through the darkness, saw nothing. “Great,” I muttered, glancing over at Larry, wrapped peacefully inside the covers. He hadn’t touched me since our last disaster. I knew he was waiting for me to make the first move, to be the one to take him in my arms, to coax him into passion, but I couldn’t seem to work up the necessary enthusiasm. I lay back against the pillow, exhaled a deep breath of troubled air, reclosed my eyes.
Almost immediately, something danced lightly across my closed lids. A spider? I wondered, shaking my head in an effort to dislodge it. Possibly a mosquito, I thought, as once again I forced my eyes open.
He was leaning over me, smiling through the darkness, the knife dancing in his fingers as it played with the air around my face. I opened my mouth to scream but he shook his head no, and the scream died in my throat. “I thought we should get better acquainted,” Colin Friendly said. “Seeing as we’re going to be family.”
“How did you get out of jail?” I heard myself ask, amazed at my ability to speak.
His smile stretched eerily across his face, his pale skin almost translucent. “You really think that a bunch of video cameras and infrared sensors are gonna be enough to keep me away from you?”
“I don’t understand. What do you want with me?”
He brought the knife to the tip of my chin. “Brought you a little Christmas present.” He grabbed my hand, brought it to the front of his pants.
“No!” I screamed, pulling my hand away as he climbed onto the bed. I looked helplessly toward Larry. What was the matter with him? Why didn’t he wake up?
“He can’t help you,” Colin Friendly stated, blue eyes slicing through the darkness, as deadly as the knife in his hand.
“What do you mean?”
“Take a look,” Colin Friendly instructed, his free arm reaching across the bed to tear the blanket away from my sleeping husband. I saw Larry’s open eyes, his parted lips, the deep red line that slashed across the center of his throat.
“No!” I screamed as Colin Friendly pushed himself on top of me. “No!”
I bolted up in bed, my screams bouncing off the walls.
Miraculously, Larry didn’t wake up. “It was a dream,” I marveled, my hands on my heart, as if to contain its wild beating. “It felt so real.”
Larry stirred, groaned, refused to wake up.
“I’m going to check on the girls,” I said to the darkness, climbing out of bed.
The house was dark and quiet. I walked toward the girls’ bedrooms, knowing I was being silly, but needing to see them sleeping soundly in their beds. You can’t protect them forever, I told myself, peeking in on Michelle, kissing her warm forehead, her hand reaching up in sleep to brush my kiss aside. Just as I had done moments ago in my nightmare, I realized with a shudder, pushing open the door to Sara’s room, approaching her bed, leaning forward to touch her cheek.
It took me a moment to realize that Sara’s bed was empty. “Sara?” I called, checking her bathroom. “Sara?” I flipped on the overhead light. Her bed hadn’t been slept in.
I was racing back through the living room toward my bedroom, about to rouse Larry, when I saw a tiny light coming from the back patio, and thought I heard voices. I stopped, stood absolutely still, listened as the soft voices floated to my ears. “Sara?” I hurried toward the sliding glass door at the back of the family room, pushed it open, stepped outside.
Sara, still wearing the clothes she’d had on earlier in the day, was sitting in one of two chaise longues, a lit cigarette dangling from her fingers. She stared at me defiantly, almost daring me to object.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked instead.
“What does it look like?”
“I don’t understand. It’s late. You know you’re not supposed to smoke anywhere on the property.”
“Oh, give the kid a break,” my sister said, leaning forward on the other chaise longue.
“Jo Lynn! What’s going on?”
“You haven’t heard the news?”
I shook my head, too dazed to speak.
“A juror at Colin’s trial announced she’s been having an affair with one of the prosecutors. The whole case has been thrown out of court. Colin’s a free man.”
“What?!”
“You heard me. He’ll be out by morning. I came by to celebrate.” She lifted a champagne glass into the air. “You don’t mind,” she said. “I helped myself.”
I stumbled back inside the house. “No, this can’t be. It can’t be.” I ran into the bedroom. “Larry, wake up. Something terrible’s happened.” I reached his side, prodded his shoulder beneath the blanket. “Larry, please wake up. Colin Friendly is a free man. He’ll be out of jail by morning.”
Larry’s body shifted beneath the covers. He breathed deeply, pushed the blanket aside, sat up in bed. “Well, don’t you look as sweet as the first strawberry in spring,” Colin Friendly said, his hand reaching for my throat.
I screamed. Or at least I thought I did. Probably the scream was silent, because Larry didn’t wake up. He lay there, his sleep undisturbed, as I sat crying beside him, my breathing labored and painful, perspiration soaking my skin, my mind trying frantically to distinguish between the nightmares of my sleep and those of my daily existence.
“Larry, are you awake?” I whispered, needing the comfort of his arms.
But he either didn’t hear me or pretended not to. I lay back against the damp pillow, as cold and alone as if I were lying in my grave, and waited for morning.
Chapter 18
Tell me again who these people are and why we’re having dinner with them,” Larry said as we pulled the car into the large parking lot in front of Prezzo’s, a trendy Italian restaurant located in a long strip plaza at the corner of PGA Boulevard and Prosperity Farms.
The parking lot was crowded and there were no spaces close to the restaurant. We drove slowly, looking down each successive aisle, our eyes peeled for an empty spot. A light rain was falling. “Robert and Brandi Crowe,” I reminded him. “I knew him in Pittsburgh.”
“Right.” Larry nodded, but his voice was flat, disinterested. “
And you ran into him at the courthouse.”
“Right,” I agreed. “There’s one.” I pointed toward a car that was just pulling out of a space at the side of the enormous. Barnes & Noble bookstore that occupied one corner of the lot.
“And the reason for this dinner?”
“Does there have to be a reason?”
Larry pulled the car into the space just vacated and turned off the engine. The rain was falling harder now. We hadn’t brought an umbrella. “I guess I should have let you off in front of the restaurant,” he said.
“Too late now.”
“I can go back.” He restarted the engine.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “A little rain won’t kill me.”
“If you’re sure,” he said.
“I’m sure.
Which was pretty much the extent of most of our conversations in the past weeks. Excessive, forced politeness over the minutest of inconsequential things. A careful treading of the waters. Saying just enough to be understood, not risking the one word that might lend itself to misinterpretation.
“We should probably wait a few minutes,” he advised.
“Sure.” I stared out the front window at the rain. It wouldn’t last long, I decided. The rain in Florida was often ferocious and brief. Like a doomed love affair, I thought, picturing Robert, wondering if he and his wife were similarly trapped, if they sat staring wordlessly out the front window of their car, waiting for a lull in the weather so that they could escape the confines of their car, of their life together.
There’s nothing lonelier than an unhappy marriage, I thought, then wondered when I had started to consider my marriage an unhappy one. I glanced at my husband, hoping to catch the flicker of a smile in his face, some sign of reassurance, a ray of hope regarding our future, but his head was pressed back against his headrest and his eyes were closed.
We’d endured rough patches before, I reminded myself: the months following Sara’s birth, when she was colicky and kept us up all night (and we were too tired and confused to make love); the months preceding our move to Palm Beach, when we were trying to convince our families and ourselves of the lightness of our decision (and we were too tired and confused to make love); the weeks that followed first my mother’s move down here and then my sister’s, when we wore ourselves out trying to accommodate them (and were too tired and confused to make love).
